The cold blooded murder of a 15 year old student
―part
of a long sequence of murders and police brutalities that
characterized
the entire post-civil war period in Greece, including the
post-junta period―
acted as a catalyst
for a social explosion and, at the same time,
made
abundantly clear the continuous worsening of the
multidimensional crisis to which we have referred many times
in the past[1].

Why a systemic crisis?

The crisis in Greece, as in
every other country which has been integrated into the
internationalised market economy,
is,
at the outset,
an economic one, as a result of the opening up and
deregulation of its markets
that this integration implies. In the Greek case, this
followed
its entry into the EU.[2]
The effects of the country’s integration into the internationalised
market economy have been, as everywhere, a huge and
continuously growing gap between, on the one hand, the
elites and the privileged social strata which benefit from
capitalist neoliberal globalisation
and, on the other, the rest of the population which suffers
the effects of
unemployment, job insecurity, and poverty to which more than
20% of the population is presently condemned. Given that
most young Greeks in the
past used to be
employed in the
significant
nationalised sector, the privatisation of large
segments of it,
combined with the effective destruction of the agricultural
and manufacturing sectors,
as
a result of the opening of markets,
has led to massive unemployment among the young people,
with Greece having one of the highest youth unemployment
rates
in the Eurozone. At the same time, the
adopted model of “export-led”
growth has led to a huge current account deficit in the
Balance of Payments of about $53bn ―or
15% of GDP―
which is easily the highest in the Eurozone.
No wonder the
present financial crisis is expected to hit Greece
particularly hard,
not only because of the effects of world recession on
tourism,
but also because its public debt is presently almost equal
to its national output ―one
of the legacies of the 2004 Athens Olympics,
which,
at a cost of a
record £9.4 bn to stage,[3]
was an economic disaster.
Not surprisingly, the
present
government is currently borrowing at excessive rates in the
world markets,
while the bill, i.e. the huge expenses to “service” this
debt, will be paid later by the lower
social strata
(which
traditionally carry the lion's share of the tax burden in
Greece),
in the form of more taxes
and less social spending.

However, the crisis does not only refer to the economic
institutions, i.e.
the capitalist market economy in its current phase of
neoliberal globalization,
but also,
to
what passes as “democracy” and “politics” today, i.e.
representative “democracy” and “politics”,
as carried out by
the professional politicians of all parliamentary parties.
This crisis is expressed by the popular disdain for the two
main parties (and the corresponding family dynasties which
have run Greece
for the last half a century or so, i.e. the Karamanlis clan
of the New Democracy party and the Papandreou clan of the
PASOK party) which are distinguished for their corruption
and fostering relations of citizens’ dependence on them. In
fact, it is exactly this dependence, vastly enhanced by the
corrupt bureaucratic state mechanism created by the same
professional politicians, which ensures their re-election,
given that the lower social strata cannot secure a job, or
even a proper medical care for that matter, unless they have
the necessary “connections” with the highly corrupt
political class. No wonder, that probably the main
characteristic of the recent social eruption in Greece is
the confirmation of the fact that a large part of the
population, particularly young people who have not yet
been integrated
into the political and economic system ―and
the chances of doing so in the future are slim!― are
uncontrollable by the political elites. And this refers not
just to the professional politicians of the two
governing parties,
but also to
those of the traditional Left which presently are engaged in
a dog fight to restore some control on the electorate, with
the Alliance of the Left party (SYRIZA) a reformist Left
party integrated into the European Union and the party of
the “European Left”, attempting to attract votes from
the
revolting youth by praising their militancy,
while
the Communist Party (KKE) attempts
to
attract votes from
the older generation of its supporters (who are now mostly
law-abiding citizens voting for PASOK) by attacking SYRIZA
for supporting lawless elements within the youth movement!

Furthermore, the crisis is also a deeply social one,
as the past eruptions of the student movement
have shown with respect to the attempts by neoliberals and
social-liberals to implement the EU instructions to
privatize education[4].
Finally, it is an ecological crisis,
as it was tragically shown in the summer of 2007,
when the effect of the combination of climatic change and
the criminal elite’s corruption was scores of poor
peasants
burned to death.[5]

Last, but not least, the crisis is not only institutional,
referring to the main economic and political institutions of
Greece,
but also ―and
mainly―
a crisis of values,
i.e. a crisis which questions the very values which support
these institutions, or better, what we may call the
dominant social paradigm, namely, the system of beliefs,
ideas and the corresponding values which are dominant in a
particular society at a particular moment of its history[6].
Thus, the youth movement
which developed during the present
crisis,
implicitly or explicitly,
questioned the individualistic values of competition and
greed, as well
as those of
selfishness and consumerism ―in
short, the values of heteronomy, which
are either
founded on the political, economic and, in general, social
institutions, or on spiritual heteronomy
resulting from
religious irrationalism.

This
is, therefore, a systemic crisis.

The spectre of insurrections today

Of course, this
crisis is not just a Greek phenomenon. Instead, at this very
moment, a spectre is haunting the world which has adopted
the capitalist market economy system: the spectre of massive
insurrections which the transnational and local elites fear
are about to
explode as a result of the accumulation of anger among the
non-privileged social strata. This is the rage caused by the
realisation
of the magnitude of their deception all these years that
hard work (and in some cases exhausting
work,
as for example,
in “miracle” countries like China, India,
etc.) and the accumulation of degrees would lead to a
constant improvement of their standard of life, that is,
their level of consumption. A deception,
which becomes
now
clear when they discover that this agonizing effort, though
leading to an expansion of the
middle classes
especially in the North, has led the vast majority of the
world’s population to live in insecurity, if not in abject
poverty. At the same time, they witness the constant
deterioration of their quality of life and, sometimes their
life itself being threatened for the sake of economic growth
and “development”, which distributes the largest portion of
social wealth to the elites, the privileged social classes
and their descendants, while the leftovers are distributed
to the rest to buy off their tolerance[7].

It is, therefore, clear that, as long as this
multidimensional crisis deepens, the social eruptions in the
North and South will
multiply.
So, it is not at all surprising
that the elites in all these
countries are reinforcing their
terrorist weaponry which they call “anti-terror” legislation,
and which,
in effect, aims
at controlling their own populations.[8]
And,
of course,
nothing will change if the present system adopts
a “human” face by
introducing some reforms of itself, (as
requested by the reformist
Left),
which
will leave the fundamental political, economic and social
structures
reproducing
the system intact.

A new May ‘68?

Today’s social
explosions,
either those
in the suburbs of Paris a few years ago[9],
or the
present one
in Greece, do not have the familiar characteristics of the
past “politicised”
insurrections,
which culminated in May
‘68.
This is what clearly
differentiates the former from the latter and,
particularly what the elites and
the
ideologiues
of the system
within
the academia and the mass media call
“blind violence”, namely,
the
popular counter-violence against property. This violence
never turns against life ―in
contrast to systemic violence that has no
problem in readily
sacrificing it, despite
their hypocritical protestations of human life as
the “ultimate good”.
Instead, it turns
only against
either the symbols of economic and political power (banks,
transnational
corporations,
Government and
police departments,
etc.) or against the symbols of consumerism. However,
these aims are not determined
collectively through a
conscious democratic (or
not) process
―as
was the case in May ‘68
when the aims of protest were determined through
the student assemblies or the various political
organizations―
but, on
principle,
individually and on the
basis
of a usually subconscious repulsion for the institutions and
values of the system. Of
course, as in any uprising, not all
participants are
driven by similar motives.
For instance, survival considerations usually motivate
impoverished immigrants or drug addicts,
both of whom are the
main victims of social oppression ―not
to mention the cases of secret services’
agents and provocateurs who simply
aim at discrediting the popular counter-violence.

However, the
“blind” character of present
popular counter-violence gives it a
positive as well as a negative character.
A
positive character,
which
expresses the popular spontaneity that is based on ―at
least― a
subconscious perception of the systemic causes of the crisis
and which turns the rage of the
participants
against the symbols of the system. And,
a negative character, because this very
spontaneity, when not driven by a universal political
project (that is,
an elementary analysis of the causes of
the crisis, a rudimentary vision of the form the alternative
society should take, and a strategy leading to it)
inevitably leads to
a dead end and to the brutal
suppression of all these
spontaneous uprisings,
through the use of even more
raw
violence, while the “silent
majority”
remains sitting
on their sofas, under the
full control of
professional politicians. The
need, therefore, for the development of a mass
movement on the basis of a new antisystemic project,
which
could lead to an alternative, worthy
of its name,
democracy, that is an inclusive democracy, is more
imperative than ever.

*
A shorter version of this article was published in
the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the
mass circulation Athens daily, Eleftherotypia,
(3/1/2009).
(link)

[1]
See e.g. the articles in the last issue (Vol.
4,
No.
4, October 2008) under the general title: THE
MULTI-DIMENSIONAL CRISIS GETS WORSE